Souvenir at ACT

* Notes *
Stephen Temperley's Souvenir, a play about Florence Foster Jenkins, is closing at ACT this weekend. The work is hilarious, and Judy Kaye does an impressive job singing quite badly. For the most part, Donald Corren was engaging as her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon. His piano playing and singing were both perfectly fine. R. Michael Miller's set is simple but lovely and the costumes from Tracy Christensen looked historically accurate and made use of pleasing colors.

The pacing was good, having just two characters never got dull, and one could appreciate the terrible singing even without knowing the arias or songs at hand. The first half of the evening was very funny, but after it bit it seemed somewhat cruel. A certain amount of self-delusion is probably unavoidable, and one did start to feel bad for Jenkins.

* Tattling * 
The audience was sparse, though still rather noisy. Someone's listening device bothered me for most of the performance, the high pitches produced were unnerving.